Starting Five

1. “Look! Up in the sky! It’s an orb! It’s a sphere! It’s….SUPER MOON!”

In brief, it’s the closest that the moon will come to the earth in 2013. The next time our favorite satellite will be this close to us will be August of 2014. Having dispensed with that, I’m devoting the rest of this item to “Nep-Tunes”: songs with a celestial body in their title. And that’s the price of entry. So, sorry, Freddie Mercury, your name works but you’re a lead singer, not a song (and to to you, too, The Mars Volta).

1. “Moon River” (1961): Someone once noted that this song, like No. 2 on my list, is all about hope. There are only 42 different words in the lyrics. “Moon River” won both an Oscar (Best Song, 1961) and a Grammy (Best Song, 1962). It was used first in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, then it was assaulted in Fletch, and most recently it appeared just last night on “Mad Men.”

2. “Here Comes The Sun” (1969): This was the song that made John Lennon and Paul McCartney do a double-take and say, “Hey, our buddy George can write.” I’d have no problems with this tune being No. 1 on your list.

3 “Fly Me To The Moon” (1964): Recorded by Frank Sinatra. Extra points for mentioning two planets (“Let me know what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.”)

4. “Moondance” (1970): This Van Morrison song was also the title of his greatest album (sorry, “Astral Weeks” fans). Bizarrely, this song was not released as a single until seven years later, while “Caravan”, also on the album –and the song that Nick Hornby has written he wants played at his funeral — never was.

5. “Planet Earth” (1981): A little high on the list? Perhaps, but it’s Duran Duran’s first single and I’ve always enjoyed its energy.

6. “Under the Milky Way” (1988): Somehow The Church, an Australian band, got misplaced by history. The album on which this tune appears, Starfish, is outstanding. They were less one-hit wonders than one-album wonders. The Down Under version of The La’s.

7. “Island in The Sun” (2001): If this Weezer tune doesn’t put a spring in your step, I don’t know what will.

8. “Moonshadow” (1970): Cat Stevens has called this the favorite of his songs. That’s good enough for me.

9. “Walking on Sunshine” (1987): Technically, the judges shouldn’t allow this. Sunshine is not itself the sun. Then again, the sun is simply a ball of fire, so who’s to say? Every time this Katrina and the Waves song came on the radio in the summer of ’87, you were obliged to turn it up and forget whatever you were doing for the next three minutes.

10. “Venus” (1959): Frankie Avalon’s big hit. A remnant of the Fifties, of the Pleasantville-lifestyle of the Eisenhower era.

Not making my cut, but they might make yours: “Walking On The Sun”, “Black Hole Sun”, “Invisible Sun”, “Staring at the Sun”, “Bad Moon Risin'”, “53 Miles West of Venus”, “Drops of Jupiter.” Note: Songs that just say “Star” in title don’t qualify, though if they did Radiohead’s “Black Star” would make the list.

2. California Dreamin’

All the leaves are brown

And the sky is gray

I think I’ll steal Stan Rizzo’s

Best idea today

On its season finale, “Mad Men” gets all Walter O’Malley as a number of characters decide it’s time to relocate from New York City to Los Angeles. Stan Rizzo hatches the idea to Don, who promptly usurps it, which leads to a classic confrontration between the two men in Don’s office in which Stan tells Don, “I’ve got a sandwich on my desk and I want to get to it before you do!”

Zing!

Then Sally, to her father: “Why don’t you tell them (the police) what I saw?”

Zing!

And it all begins to pile up for Don. Last week’s complete embarrassment of Ted Chaough and Peggy. The previous week’s “I was just comforting Mrs. Rosen Rosen.” Now this. And then he punches out a minister, while having a flashback to his youth of another minister who bleats that “the biggest mistake that people make is believing that they cannot be forgiven.”

Hello, DONNNNN! That’s God tapping you on the shoulder.

And then, in a scene that is every bit as worthy as Petyr Baelish’s “Chaos Is a Ladder”, Don Draper has his “On the Road To Damascus” moment. He’s pitching a perfect game to the Hershey executives, calling Hershey’s the “currency of affection” (that’s gold, Donny!) and noting his doting father, lawn mowing, and tousled hair. He’s right there! He’s won Hershey and he’s off to California! It’s George Bailey in the back of the sedan headed off for his honeymoon!

But wait. Don Draper, for the first time in as long as anyone can remember, and for no reason that will gain him any secular advantage, decides to come clean. “That isn’t true. I was an orphan. I grew up in Pennsylvania… in a whorehouse.”

Bye-bye, partnership.

Bye-bye, California.

Bye-bye, most likely, Megan.

Hello, inner peace.

“And the Emmy goes to…”
It’s just the most captivating scene in an episode that was replete with them.

And so now Ted will head to California (“Ciao, Chaough”), while we miss an opportunity to place two iconic Don D.’s (Draper and Drysdale) in the same city at the same time.

We end the episode, and the season, with Don taking his three children to see his childhood home on Thanksgiving weekend. It’s a dilapidated whorehouse in a bad neighborhood, but on the bright side it’s a Victorian on a corner lot. “This is where I grew up,” Don tells them. And cue Judy Collins singing Joni Mitchell’s classic hit, “Both Sides Now.” Yes, Don/Dick has looked at life from both sides now, from up and down…

 

And I do hope that Bob Benson tops Mark Lisanti’s “Mad Men” Power Rankings this week: He (possibly) engineers Pete Campbell’s mother’s death (“Manolo overboard!”), gets Pete kicked out of the Chevy account (you’ll thank him later for this, Campbell), survives a performance review with Roger Sterling, and still carves Joan’s turkey, so to speak.

Here is Alan Sepinwall’s review.

3. Or-Chasm

 

So now we know there’s another situation in which a grown man will repeat the terms “Jesus” and “Lord” ceaseleslly.

Nik Wallenda, 34, crossed not the Grand Canyon but actually the Little Colorado River Gorge last night by walking across a two-inch thick cable suspended 1,500 feet above the river. The crossing lasted more than 20 minutes and aired “plausibly live” (a 10-second delay, just in case) on The Discovery Channel.

If you’re not familiar with the surname, the Wallendas are the most famous and tragic high-wire act in history. Here are the final moments of Nik’s grandfather, Karl Wallenda, the founder of The Flying Wallendas. Karl was 73 at the time of that attempt in Puerto Rico.

4. Speaking of aerial acts gone wrong…

 

…That’s Jane Wicker, in her final few seconds, standing on the wing of a bi-plane at the 39th annual Vectron Dayton Air Show last weekend. The pilot seemed to be suddenly overtaken by a gust of wind that caused the plane to tilt severely and then, as so often happens, gravity won. The last words she hears, ironically, from the P.A. announcer: “Watch this. Jane Wicker. Sitting on top of the world.”

Updated rankings of the 200 Best & Worst Jobs now have “Wing Walker” at 199th, behind “Lumberjack” but still ahead of “Newspaper Reporter.”

 

5. “We, the people…”

Yesterday morning I exhausted a few tweets on the Booz Allen whistleblower, but I think Max Frankel in The New York Times did an exemplary job of noting most of the points that needed to be made. Here’s the essay, and I’ll highlight the most salient points below.

1. The title: “Inalienable”, which means “unable to be taken away from or given away by the possessor.” Well, that key adjective from a little document known as the Declaration of Indpendence appears to have been cast aside by our government.

2. You can bicker about Facebook or Amazon sharing your information. But, no one is compelling you to use those sites. You and I trade privacy for convenience here. More importantly, those two companies lack the authority to indict and incarcerate us.

3. You, and the federal government, can accuse Snowden of releasing classified information, but the government was openly lying, in congressional hearings, on this topic. Snowden’s “crime” was the only tangible way to compel our elected officials to come clean about programs that not only seem to be serious transgressions on our privacy, but also open the door to a litany of corrupt behavior if and when misused.

4. The government long, long ago forfeited the moral authority to say, Just trust us.

5. The government cannot act on its suspicions without a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. However, this is a judicial board that operates entirely in secret. Are you f’in kidding me? As Jon Stewart said a few weeks back, “It’s not tragic that you broke laws to do this. It’s tragic that you didn’t have to break any.”

6. Privatization. And this is a MAJOR POINT. There’s lots of money in consulting firms getting their tentacles into the act of private surveillance. Especially if it is done indiscriminately, as it is now. So that means government contracts. And who sits on the boards of these firms. Former legislators. It’s a scam, babe, and it’s costing you and I money.

7. My own final point: If government surveillance of its own citizens has expanded to such lengths that we contract that duty out to private firms, well, maybe we’ve gone a little bit too far. There’s a “Minority Report” sensibility going on here, and of course it is also Orwellian. Patrick Henry said it best, “Give me liberty or give me death.” I’d rather not sacrifice the former while trying to preserve the latter.

Reserves

Just what in the wide world of sports (Slim Pickens reference!) do Selena Roberts and Roopstigo think they are doing? Roberts, the former New York Times and later Sports Illustrated scribe, launched her site on February 4. Her Wiki page denotes her as a “digital entrepreneur”, which I’d take to mean that she is hoping to make this site profitable.

So, if you visit Roopstigo you will see that, today, there is one original written piece on the homepage (“Straight Shooters: Why Women Rule The Rifle Range”, by Pat Jordan, a story that has been begging to be reported, let’s be honest) and five pieces that Roberts (her staff?) have culled from great American newspapers.

One by Blair Kerkoff of The Kansas City Star.

One by Chris Mueller of the Mitchell, S.D., Daily Republic.

One by Steve Hummer and Bill Rankin of The Atlanta Constitution.

One by Shawn Windsor of The Detroit Free Press.

And one, ironically titled “Poaching Disease”, by Rustin Dodd, also of The Kansas City Star.

Roberts is NOT providing links to these papers’ websites. Instead, she has literally cut and pasted the pieces and then placed them on her own site. Yes, she credits the newspaper and authors, but this is like me taking a loaf of bread from Albertson’s and selling it at Kroger.

Selena: You are stealing.

And you’re probably not making any friends among editors and your fellow/former colleagues.

Granted, I used to write at SI, I launched my own site (though I’m not a digital entrepreneur) and I, too, post stories that others have written. However, I ALWAYS provide a link to the publication and the majority of my content here is my own.

Your thoughts?